Title
Meta wants to consume the fediverse.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
“There are rumours that Meta would become “Fediverse compatible”. You could follow people on Instagram from your Mastodon account”
Are there examples of this? Or is this just the fear? This all seems like a knee jerk reaction to something we are already avoiding by being on Lemmy/mastodon. The point of having decentralized instances isn’t popularity. It’s to avoid the corporate bullshit, which is inherently less popular.
Corporations generally try to follow the three Es which is bad for the community as a whole
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Except it doesn’t work and no corporation does it any more because it doesn’t. Look at the two main examples, internet browsers and email. Both of them remain open platforms with viable foss alternatives because google knows that doing this sort of stuff will get them in trouble with anti-trust suits.
You know chrome is basically the only actual browser, right? everything but Firefox is a chrome skin.
only actual browser
Firefox
Browser Market Share Worldwide - June 2023
Chrome 62.55% (Chromium engine)
Safari 20.5% (Webkit engine)
Edge 5.28% (Chromium engine)
Opera 3.22% (Chromium engine)
Firefox 2.8% (Quantum Engine)
Samsung Internet 2.38% (Chromium engine)
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#While other browsers technically exist, it is foolish to think that web browsers are a thriving diverse ecosystem right now, when 74% of all web-browsing is done using a Chrome-based browser. With their influence, if Google decided to start forcing changes on how websites function on a technical level, they could absolutely do that with little to stop it;- what are websites going to do, alienate a supermajority of their users?- And that is why people are so worried about things like Threads, because once a single company has supermajority control of a market, they can use that control as a weapon to get what they want.
I say this as an avid Firefox user: Firefox is niche. And the only reason Safari has 20% is because it is integrated with apple products, if it weren’t for that, Chrome and Chrome-reskins would effectively be the only option.
if Google decided to start forcing changes
They already do. If they want an api for their next web project, they just create it. Sure, first they offer to make it a standard but if others disagree, they just make the api and encourage people to use it. This is IE all over again.
thanks for dredging up the stats. also til Samsung has a browser. and I guess brave is a rounding error
Cool
If by examples, you mean supporting evidence that they will be part of the Fediverse:
https://www.slashgear.com/1332608/meta-threads-fediverse-new-explained/
And especially https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Screenshot-2023-07-05-at-6.17.21-PM.jpg
It’s not ready yet, but it’s clearly on their roadmap.
Thanks
If any instance becomes large enough to have an undue influence, which Meta would likely have, then they effectively control the entire ecosystem. At that point, it effectively stops being decentralized (See: The 51% Attack, although this wouldn’t happen at a certain number/ratio). When it becomes convenient to them, they can pull the plug, and destroy the rest of the ecosystem that isn’t theirs.
It’s exactly what happened with XMPP and Google Talk.
Can we not simply block/filter meta servers/communities from the clients we use to access lemmy?
Clients, no. We have no way (currently) to individually block an instance, nor would it be effective in preventing this problem. Threads users, as a whole, need to be blocked from the Fediverse, so that Threads is not viewed as a way to interact with Mastodon users.
Our particular instances can defederate from Meta, which would stop certain issues - but not the EEE concerns that are usually brought up. It has to be a widespread block.
Maybe not in Lemmy but on mastodon individual users can block domains.
Also possible on kbin, which I appreciate because it allows granularity on a user-level.
The Connect app just got the ability to block instances, but that’s not too usefull in addressing this problem.
Xmpp was a messaging protocol though, is that really comparable to decentralized forums?
XMPP was and still is a buggy mess, and the reason Google unlinked it was that while it had a fraction of the legit traffic, it was like 80% of trolling and spam and other crap.
And Google killed xmpp? No, xmpp killed xmpp, if you can kill something that’s already dead.
People started using other networks because they got used to
- Messages arriving
- Messages being readable by the recipient
- Media like images actually being shown properly.
With xmpp messages frequently got lost with no error, different clients having different encryption and encoding settings, different ways to encode and decode media… A complete mess.
People using that as an EEE example are clueless, or stupid.
Also, if meta starts federating, it will eventually stop it for the same reason Google stopped talking with other xmpp servers. Because it’ll be the source of most of the crap, but very little legit content.
Thank you for an actually reasonable explanation
Yes, because it was a decentralized messaging protocol, like ActivityPub. The problem in the end was not the ‘OG’ XMPP Users but the new Google Talk users and how Google treated the protocol. This, theoretically, could happen with ‘the fediverse’, too.
If Facebook has over 50% of the users of fediverse on their instance and they decide to cut the rest off because we don’t play nice with them it’s not like we just wither away. The fediverse just splits in half where Facebook apologists are on one side and everyone else on the other. Basically where we are right now.
I’m sure there’s enough people that want nothing to do with Facebook to keep our side of the fediverse active enough to be relevant.
I wouldn’t count on 50/50 split. I imagine it would probably be closer to 90/10 if threads is seen as enjoyable.
A lazy search showed currently there are 6.5 million users in the Fediverse. A similar lazy search told that Threads reportedly had 30 million signups in the first 24 hours.
Even that makes me feel like we’d be in a hidden away corner of the Fediverse just based on sheer size.
Is that necessarily a bad thing though? Two things come to mind:
- Do I want the kind of user here that’s willing to sign up for Facebook’s new social platform?
- Do I want +100 million users here flooding every interesting discussion with thousands of comments to the point that my reply is immediately going to get lost in the flood of new messages?
I wouldn’t be surprised if even now with our 6.5 million users the quality of discussion here is far greater than it is on Threads with their 30 million users. Obviously too little users is a bad thing but I imagine there can also be too many. Back in my reddit days I much more enjoyed the more slow paced niche subs than the popular ones with 10 million subs. Replying to AskReddit thread with 1000 messages is a complete waste of time. No one is going to read it.
I quote the lawyers: “it depends.” Are you here for a more personal community? Do you love endless masses of discussion? I’m sure there more questions to go along with this.
For me as well, I never really participated much in Reddit due to the sheer size of most discussions. I do enjoy being able to make a comment that isn’t washed into the void instantly, but I don’t know how much that would actually be affected my Threads. There’s a chance that the majority of Threads folks won’t even bat an eye at the rest of the Fediverse.
What I’m more worried about is the fact that this is a massive, for profit, information harvesting corporation is trying to squeeze themselves into a five times smaller system. Why not start their own thing? They hyped up the Metaverse before, why not build off that?
I conclude that they see a way to maximize profits by setting up here. Be it as innocent as that they hope for more traffic from the Fediverse or something like hoping to snuff out competitors, I don’t trust it. On the same level as I don’t trust them with my data.
with our 6.5 million users
Are there really that many? Sure doesn’t feel like it.
Keep in mind that’s just registered users from what I saw. Not active users. I believe in terms of active users it’s about 2 million. Don’t quote me, that was off memory of reading a different thread.
I feel like a lot of people are fear mongering
Meta does not want to “consume the fediverse” , it’s not worth it. Threads has been up for a day and it already has 10x the number of active users than mastodon. Mastodon and the fediverse as it currently stands, is a blip compared to instagram and Twitter. They’re doing activitypub so they can claim there’s a free market and avoid any anti-trust litigation for owning the three largest social media platforms. If that means a relatively small number of people stay on mastodon instead of threads that’s a small price to pay.
People keep saying “threads should join Mastodon because then the famous people will join it.”
I don’t want Trump and Tate on Mastodon, thanks. I don’t want all the bigots on Mastodon, thanks. I don’t want millions of people on Mastodon, thanks.
I love how it’s like the “old internet” when it was about discussing your interests, not about influencers.
That’s a great article thanks for linking it.
I’m curious how many other tools have been silently killed like that or destroyed that we’ll never know about.
I’m still shocked about the mastodon integration… “free” services make users the product so how does allowing anyone without an account to interact with your platform make sense monetarily if you don’t have some nefarious long game in mind.
Just wondering, how does that affect other instances? The whole point of the fediverse is that it’s decentralized.
I could see that it would cause a problem if half the content came from one instance and then that instance de-federated.
People might move to that instance to join the communities that they were previously following which could reduce the content on other instances as they would probably only use one main account.
Lots of coulds, mights and maybes there though.
Here’s another maybe: It might be a good if all of these content consumers moved on to another server. If they don’t understand/appreciate the point of the metaverse, what are they contributing?
In this scenario it doesn’t matter wether they understand the point or not. The communities that they used to follow and contribute to aren’t available to them anymore so they create a new account that can access them.
They can keep both accounts if they want to but they might not want to do that.
Instances had problems with just people signing-up. Imagine Meta’s server farms federate. Everything is smooth and bug free on Threads. “Sign up on Threads” because it’s a convenient and smooth experience. Imagine the smaller instances loosing users. Now when Threads has lots of users they will decide to stop federating. They will take all their user with them.
I’m not sure I totally buy the conclusion here. It might have been the goal, but Google Talk or whatever died too.
If EEE is the end game, what can we do to fight back? Universal defederation probably isn’t going to happen.
Google stuff generally dies quietly due to Google’s corporate attention deficit in running product lines.
Meta, on the other hand, is sleazy but full of determination.
Meta, on the other hand, is sleazy but full of determination.
Like Facebook Poke? Or the Metaverse?
The metaverse is very much still chugging along, haven’t they sunk billions into it?
The fact that nobody’s talking about it anymore doesn’t bode well if so.
Use various arguments like the existing defederations to pull users over to different instances?
There’s a lot of anxiety because it’s topical. Nearly ever user here I’d wager, myself included, just flipped to Lemmy as we watched Reddit break the camel’s back.
I think what most people don’t quite realize though is why this is happening. Reddit isn’t just gearing up for an IPO, they’re transitioning to the model spearheaded by Apple: you access their ecosystem exclusively through their platform.
Every large tech company is trying to play this game. They are developing hardware that gives sole access to their platform which in turn controls the experience and distribution of their content. Apple is best at it and massively profitable, but everyone is trying it. Most already have the software>>>content pipeline locked down, it’s the hardware they can’t get right.
That being said, Meta understands that the easiest way to grow Threads is to flip Instagram and Facebook users, not Mastadon users. The easiest way to keep users is not some defederation long con, it’s to get your grandma and your spouse on their platform. The goal for Meta is to reach a critical mass tipping point, where as a society, most people agree you just have to have an account through them to be part of a larger conversation. They aren’t trying to kill federalized platforms directly, because it’s easier to skip that step and try to make every platform that isn’t their own second tier at best. It’s in their best interest to ignore everyone else and just on-board as much of their Instagram and Facebook base as possible in the next year.
What I love so much about the internet, is if something important is posted to one of these corporate based social media sites, I’ll see a screen shot of it somewhere else, without ever having to engage with the primary source.
If this is actually their thinking, why even bother with the Fediverse at that point?
I’d guess it’s purely to avoid litigation from Twitter. If they didn’t poach Twitter employees or IP, and instead based some of their platform on open source, fediverse stuff, that’s not a multiyear lawsuit with hundreds of millions in lawyer fees.
Threads will be part of the fediverse. This means that thread users can interact with Lemmy, Mastodon, and Kbin users.
There will be a huge number of thread users, it will probably quickly become the largest part of the fediverse.
Some people think that threads users will migrate to other fediverse applications and help the fediverse. Other people think that fediverse users will migrate to threads since it will have more features and the fediverse will die if threads defederates from everything.
Is there anything preventing instances from defederating from threads?
No, in fact many already have
So far, there are not that many, or at least I had expected more somehow… see here: https://fedipact.veganism.social/
Edit: Spelling / Grammar
I understand the sentiment, but it seems like a bad take to assume that because a corporate entity produces an app that can interface with the Fediverse then it will kill the Fediverse.
If Threads has some features that draw people’s attention then it should serve as a guide to help the TPA developers set course for future features.
What they’d possibly do is things like stickers, custom emoji, etc that’s locked behind a license and only viewable on Threads. Thats the type of “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” that’s feared.
If one leaves lemmy for Facebook’s custom stickers then I don’t think anything of a value was lost there.
I hope everyone willing signs up to Threads so we have all the shit in one bucket which we can then toss away and keep doing our own thing.
This is very possible, and it is important to remain cognizant of this possible goal. However, I think it is ultimately our responsibility as members of the fediverse to ensure that we are making the non-Meta communities interesting and engaging.
Ultimately, if an instance does become toxic to the principles of another instance, then de federation always exists as a nuclear option. 🤷♂️
Counter point, if Threads has features others don’t then they should contribute them to the open source projects and be good stewards rather than (in this hypothetical) force people to use their instance to have them.
Agreed. The absolute best case would be having Meta publishing open source contributions to existing projects or making their software FOSS. However, very few corps have ever been willing to make that type of commitment.
I don’t think we should be praising Meta for making Threads, but I also don’t believe there is a need to actively detest it’s existence. If nothing else, I hope that its compatibility with ActivityPub allows mainstream users to find some niche communities that interest them, which they may never have found otherwise.
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There’s a general, well founded, distrust of meta. Theres a general theory going around that they will embrace, extend and extinguish the fediverse. It will ride the wave of federation then when it gets large enough it will defederate or add some dumb feature that will break all compatibility. The problem with this strategy is it will bring them in front of a court for anti-conpetitive behavior, just like what happened to Microsoft every time it tried to do this, and possibly break up the whole company as instagram might get shaved off too. There’s a reason Google doesn’t try to do this with chrome or gmail, they learned it’s a bad strategy from Microsoft. The reality is the fediverse as it stands right now is a blip to meta, a blip they can point to and say they aren’t a monopoly, but just a blip, not some radical existential threat that needs to be destroyed.
Wow. Reading the heavyhanded corporate plays by people like musk, Reddit’s c-suite, and now the fears about Threads it’s like the corporatocracy is trying to crush and/or consume independent social media.
Because companies like Meta embrace, extend and extinguish.
Only if people voluntarily give up their privacy and switch to a threads account/app, right? I mean ultimately the argument is that Meta will develop features so cool that we’ll all give up our privacy for them?
Idk, it just seems like if that’s the fear, I think it will happen regardless and even defederating won’t really stop that. I feel like people will just make new accounts wherever the cool place to be is.
I’m all for defederating just because you don’t want to see or associate with that content though, that totally make sense.
Well, Meta said it already has 53 million sign ups for threads.
why do you think they care enough about the comparatively tiny amount here in the fediverse to do the whole embrace-extinguish stuff?
Same reason Spez is still doing damage control over 3% of his userbase leaving, up to and including signing up more bots to boost traffic and denounce the protests. It’s not like he’s losing a whole lot, he’s kept multimillions of users (human and otherwise) to make his shareholders happy and his site will stumble along pretty ok for years. But in capitalism, especially the ad-driven digital sphere, eyes are everything.
Federating with the rest of us IS a blip in the grand scheme, but so was 3%. The fediverse existing outside of Threads carries the very significant risk that their users will sign up for their service and see the other platforms that are just as nice without being ad-soaked, subscription-based, and demanding your real name while they sell every ounce of your info.
One of us is going to be leeching users from the other and meta will not like this, so they’re liable to make damn sure it’s them. It wouldn’t really shock me to see them neglect to upkeep federation with non-meta instances while they attempt to charm users away with a recognizable, high-traffic platform full of bells and whistles.
EEE doesn’t need to be an intentional attack. They only seek profit.
- It is profitable to adapt an already mature protocol like XMPP or ActivityPub instead of creating their own from scratch (BlueSky is creating their own protocol, and they’re still in beta and probably will never catch up to Threads because of this).
- It is profitable to create new features that increase the engagement of the users. And since they don’t care for the community, only for themselves, these features are never released as open source and incorporated into the protocol.
- And if it’s profitable to wall their instance (like WhatsApp using XMPP but not federating with anyone else) or to close it (like Google killing Google Talk), they will do it. They will not care if their actions negatively affect the rest of the fediverse.
You know Facebook has released a ton as open source, right?
Edit: ever heard of React? Facebook. Pytorch? Facebook. GraphQL? Facebook. Llama? Facebook. Plus a ton of more niche stuff. Zstd, relay, fresco, hydra, redex, React native…
Edit2: https://github.com/facebook
The fediverse is virgin soil, Meta trying to get there before others is expectable, if only to poison the wells.
Couldn’t any features they add be copied by other instances?
their data will (maybe) be available, but as far as actual features threads is a whole different thing
think of it like kbin and lemmy: we can interact between them, but if lemmy adds a feature kbin doesn’t get it
so if threads adds a feature, mastodon and the rest of the fediverse doesn’t automatically get it
actually pinned posts i think is a good example for kbin and lemmy: they both have pinned posts, but they’re slightly different and therefor don’t operate correctly together
Only if Threads is open source, but it doesn’t seem to be.
Threads is convenient and people are lazy: a match made in heaven
did microsoft even do that succesfully? like i know that was the strategy, and its become a meme in the OS community, but didn’t it ever actually work? is everyone using windows server software now, for instance?
No, it never worked. The examples are web browsers, email and java, all of which remain open standards. There’s a reason Google doesn’t try this shit even though they own a large portion of the email and browser market, because they know it’ll just piss people off and bring them in front of a judge for anti-competitive behavior and ultimately do nothing.
EEE worked for Microsoft in short term, but that kind of strategy never really works in long term and the open alternatives end up better than ever.
Windows was able to secure some of the server market for a time, but despite that they never managed to eat into Linux’s inevitable growth in the server market, and these days, Linux and BSD cheerfully exist in the Azure platform with full support from Microsoft.
Two other prominent examples of this are document formats and Java. Microsoft tried to introduce Office Open XML (.docx) as a competiting standard for OpenDocument (.odt), but they failed to even properly support the standard themselves, so now we have MSOffice-specific document format variants existing alongside OpenDocument.
Microsoft was pretty much forced to stay off of Java game for legal reasons, invented their own similar language (C#), then realised that keeping it closed was unsustainable and the open source implementation their research department was cooking up was the way forward. So nowadays C# is actually even more open platform than Java, and it’s Java that is playing the catch-up game.
does anyone know about the tumblr activity pub federation that was meant to happen?
Tumblr - both as the userbase and as the company - has been pretty “cool” compared to Facebook/Instagram (which isn’t a high bar, really). I think most people are indifferent to favorable on letting them in here if they decide on doing that.
I think they’re “getting their feet wet” with federation with an official WordPress plugin (Tumblr is now owned by the company that develops WordPress) first, before deploying it on Tumblr.
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Because it’s going to be better than this place in a week and the folks in lemmy right now are the typical privacy zealots.
They are frightened at threads being more successful.
No one is frightened of Threads being “more successful”. It’s an Instagram spinoff, it’s obviously going to be successful.
People who are here don’t want to be sending their data to Meta. That’s it. That’s the whole issue. Many of us are here specifically because we don’t want to voulunatairly hand our IP and usage data to these companies anymore.
Why are you wasting your time here shitting on this space? You don’t need to be here. You clearly don’t want to be here.
Go home.
